


Recruited

by thedevilchicken



Category: The Recruit (2003)
Genre: Background Het, Implied Slash, M/M, Post-Movie(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-11-15
Updated: 2003-11-15
Packaged: 2018-04-05 18:53:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4191126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/pseuds/thedevilchicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The CIA couldn't pay enough for him to deal with this shit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recruited

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to Livejournal on 15 November 2003.

He jerks awake shaking in the middle of the night and much as he'd like to tell himself that it's just a bad dream, he knows it's more. Nothing in his life could ever be that simple anymore. 

The room's dark and hot and smells like sex and he can't remember a time when it was different. The thermostat only gave out a week ago but right now he can remember last winter when the heat gave out completely and he woke up every morning with numb toes, seeing his breath on the bedroom air. It's like he doesn't know there's a lamp on the nightstand that actually switches on when he switches it on or that five, six hours ago the room smelled like the noxious pot pourri his mom left on her last visit. Because right now he's not in that room. He's stuck in a motel room, drunk on cheap scotch and has a horrible sinking feeling that the phone's hanging half off the hook because he made a wince-worthy phone call to that ugly recruiter from Dell.

It would almost be easier if he were in that motel room, a mile or so down the road from the Blue Ridge Bar where he bought all his liquor, three miles from the pizza place that would send him a deep pan pepperoni at 3am. If the worst thing he'd done was call a recruiter at twenty past midnight and let the scotch do the talking. 

He'd had such fucking grand designs; Spartacus, freer of slaves, wooer of computer reps - what a fucking joke. Then a slave to the Company, except it wasn't the Company really but Walter fucking Burke and everything - _everything_ \- he thought he knew was a lie. Lie after lie after lie and he swallowed every goddamned one until he was listening to Zack's last - oh God - Zack's last breath, running Layla off the road with his big goddamned red truck that he didn't even fucking _like_ , like that mattered... Stealing from the government. Traitor.

He bit his lip. Everything was a test. Nothing was what it seemed. Nothing. 

But what got to him most of all, right down deep, past all of the smoke and the mirrors and the double talk and the Company policy bullshit, was that Burke was right all along. In the end it was his desire to please that fucked him the hell up - his desire to please Walter Burke, twisted fucking father substitute and bitter-ass traitor. Told him what he needed to hear, fed him line after line that he swallowed down whole, fucked him till he trusted him then just fucked him over. Fucked up, underestimated, died. Left James wondering just what was real and what was fake. Left him waking up shaking in the middle of the night back in a motel room where he'd spent one night alone. And one not.

He's stayed in twenty, thirty motel rooms just like that since then, on roads from nowhere to nowhere, at least to the untrained eye. He's slept between sheets that'll never be the right side of dirty and found the lamp on the nightstand was probably broken by some dick drunk who really should've known better and probably would have if the guy serving at the local bar had done his job and kicked him out before he was sweating the alcohol out through his fucking pores. Sometimes he's alone and sometimes... not, but he'll never feel the way he did that one night, after Burke said the magic word that began with N and really only ever applied to a blond ex-cop killed in a train yard and a liar who never really worked for Shell Oil. 

The CIA couldn't pay enough for him to deal with this shit. And they don't. That makes him wonder, and smile ruefully.

He doesn't wake this way every night. He can go weeks, sometimes months now, entire missions, span three continents and five time zones and six plane rides and rush-hour traffic home from Langley. He won't even think about that room and the stuff he thought he'd left behind him in the frat house back at MIT but evidently hadn't for weeks at a time. He can look at the girl at the register in Starbucks and not wonder melodramatically if there's a gun under her apron or ask himself if the friendly guy at the newspaper stand is just a little _too_ friendly. He's moving on. 

But sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night, and though he'd like to tell himself it's just a bad dream, he knows it's more. Sometimes the bitter taste in his mouth almost makes him sick, but his stomach's lurching at a memory, the taste of a ghost. A spook. 

He shuts it away and he opens his eyes and he brushes back the stray hair from Layla's forehead. She smiles in her sleep and murmurs his name like she always does. She hasn't a clue. He hopes that what she doesn't know won't hurt her.


End file.
